Thursday, September 29, 2011

Nariman Narimanov was one of the most important turn-of-the-century intellectuals in Azerbaijan. He helped to establish Hümmət, the Transcaucasian Muslim branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and went on to be one of the first leaders of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. He was a prolific writer, translating Russian masterpieces into Azerbaijani and writing a number of plays, novels, and short stories. His interest in theater reflects his socialist politics in that he could reach a mass audience composed largely of illiterate Azerbaijani workers and peasants.

The article translated below appeared in the Baku newspaper, Kaspii, in 1896. I imagine that it was published originally in Russian and translated sometime later into Azerbaijani. This text is drawn from the 2004 edition of the Selected Works of Nariman Narimanov, which is conveniently available in its entirety as a free .pdf at the website of the National Library of Azerbaijan. As far as I know this is the first time this article has been translated into English. Sections that I am uncertain about are highlighted in blue.

Some learned Transcaucasian Muslims are publishing their own articles in Russian journals of late. On the one hand, of course, this is a joyous event, because it seems Muslims are slowly beginning to take an interest in journalism. On the other hand, however, this event is very sorrowful because they poorly grasp the significance of journalism. Above all, it is doubtless that the press can positively influence a specific society only when it treats the problems put up for debate concerning the entire society without any bias and when the ideas put forth in newspapers are clear to the mass of society.

What a great pity it is to see these articles, whether primary or secondary. These articles have the same focus, namely, the backwardness of the Muslims in their cultural characteristics. Let’s take the issues of Russian newspapers now in front of us as an example. In these issues, subjects such as these are touched upon: the state of the clerics in Transcaucasia, the necessity of Muslim women to receive an education, the more natural advantage of the new method for the necessity of learning the language of the homeland and Russian, etc.

It seems that the authors of these articles want to give certain benefits to their culturally undeveloped coreligionists; with the force of their fortunes they are striving to set the rude crowd on the path of truth liberated from the maelstrom of ignorance. But alas! The toil and service of these gentlemen will with difficulty hardly benefit a society that appears in their eyes as uneducated and dimwitted. It is true, if the goal of the above-mentioned articles had been to acquaint the Russian reading population with the public life of the Transcaucasian Muslims, then, of course, speaking of these things would have been worthwhile. But the issue here is, their dynamic participation in these articles or in other examples has of necessity come to take on the character of an appeal and sermon to the Transcaucasian Muslims. But this sermon often does not reach them. In order to clarify let us briefly survey the content of these articles.

One of the authors, generally in his discussion of the Muslim clerics, speaks with foam at the mouth about the actions of the Iranian mullahs and says that they callously and mercilessly exploit the Transcaucasian Muslims by shamelessly using their trust and fanaticism, ostensibly preaching the path that he gave for the secular education of the conditions of the Muslims… At the end of the article the author asks his coreligionists not to listen to the words of the thuggish mullahs and rather than filling the enormous pockets of the Iranian mullahs to spend their money on more helpful and beneficial things. Another author, while speaking about women’s education, very disapprovingly describes our mothers with his pen and says our mothers give their own children a poor upbringing and are incapable of giving an upbringing at all. Because of this the honorable author of this article thinks that in the future education will be necessary for girls who will become mothers and hopes that his voice will be approved. The third author, by speaking of the usefulness of learning the Russian language as the language of the homeland, calls for children to be placed in Russian language schools etc.

In articles that we read like these you must ask yourself the question: for whom and with what goal have they been written? If they are written for the sake of twenty or thirty educated Muslim individuals, we could assure these gentlemen that these educated Muslims understand the problems being discussed just as well as the very authors of the articles. If the honorable authors are taking into consideration their own class, these articles truly have significance for them in their content, then we could dare to assert that their efforts are totally pointless: the people who need these articles are not reading them and the people who don’t need them are reading them.

If the educated Muslims are not raising this question then who will raise it? – because the reader will ask. You see, in this situation society needs to be prepared in order to read articles like these. However due to the fact that at the moment no opportunity exists to pursue this, in our opinion, it would be good and to the benefit of our government if at least one newspaper appeared for all of Transcaucasia in the Azerbaijani language in which could be discussed the current affairs concerning the Muslims of Russia.

Society, having read a newspaper in its own language, at that point would have the opportunity to know what things are required of it and what is keeping it backwards. But in so far as there is no newspaper like this, the educated Muslims, instead of spending golden hours writing useless articles in a language not understood by Muslims, should be publishing pamphlets about these and other issues in simple Azerbaijani and writing about the utility of learning the Russian language – these would appear to be much more intelligent activities.